(April 6, 1878,
Berlin; assassinated by the Nazis in the night of the 9 au10 July 1934
with the concentration camp of Orianenburg)

German poet

Otto GROSSPsychoanalyst,

(1877 - 1920)

Hermann HESSE (in
the center) in Monte Verità

dance
with Mary Wigmann

the
utopians of Assembles Verità.
While Europe precipitates in the war, from young intellectuals at the edge of
the Lake Maggiore release themselves from the constraints of civilization.
Anarchists, Socialists, vegetarians, artists, writers and dancers experienced
with Assembles Verità, close to Ascona, of new ways of life. The troop of the
dancers of Rudolf von Laban is offered to nature in a revolutionary nudity to
renew the company of the interior. This early photography color (it acted in the
beginning of a slide on glass) anticipates a future technique and reflects
intensively, by the faichor preserved of his colors, the aspiration with the
change which motivates these "reformers of the life".

the
geographical situation of Assembles Verità

sights
on Ascona

Assemble
Verità, a history:

In
this XIXe century, Europe is shaken by the arrival of the industrialization
which upsets the social organization. This crisis is particularly felt in
Germany where signs of rejection of the industrial world appear since 1870.
Thus, in response to the urbanization generated by a new organization of work,
Naturism appears. One tries to flee the pollution of the cities, to create
communities and " cities gardens " to live in harmony with
nature. Those which share this point of view gather soon around the movement
of Reform of the life (Lebensreform, 1892). Contrary to the Reform called by
the rosicrucians of the XVIIe century and in the literary Utopias which
succeeded to him, scientific progress is felt like a threat at the XIXe
century. The movement of Reform of the life drains the followers of the
vegetarianism, naturism, spiritism, natural medicines, sanitarianism, the Théosophique
Company, as well as artists.

In
this mobility, a Swiss theosophist, Alfredo Pioda, try to establish in 1889 a
laic convent. The group takes the name of Fraternitas and is installed on the
Vérité go up (Verità goes up), close to Ascona (Tessin, Switzerland).
Frantz Hartmann and the Wachtmeister countess, of familiar of Héléna
Petrovna Blavatsky, takes part in this transitory project. It is undoubtedly
this experiment which will inspire in Frantz Hartmann "an institution
rosicrucian in Switzerland", the chapter which it will add to the
successive editions of its initiatory novel an Adventure at the Rosicrucian
brotherhood. Ashes of Fraternitas, Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann give birth
to in 1900 Monte Verità, a community of the same Nombreux type will be
those which will attend Monte Verità, like the writer Herman Hesse, the
future philosopher Martin Buber, the politician Gustav Landauer, Emile
Jacques-Dalcroze, the inventor of eurhythmics, or Rudolf von Laban, the
choreographer and theorist of the dance.

Monte
Verità is a splendid natural site which dominates the Lake Maggiore top of a
hill with Ascona, Switzerland. Monte Verità received its name at the
beginning of the century when the hill was inhabited for the first time by a
small community of people in the search of an alternative way of life, new and
healthier: vegetarians there lived in close contact with nature, exposed their
naked bodies to the sun, built their huts and houses with their own hands
while dreaming with a more peaceful future. The community, its evenings
of discussion, its concerts and its performances, became soon a curiosity not
only for people of Ascona but also for travellers of all Europe who started to
visit this unusual place. The community burst before the First World War
but something of the spirit of the place remained in more of the vestiges of
this time collected by Harald Szeeman for the Museum of Assembles Verità;
photographs, tables, books, posters, letters, objects testify to the passage
in this place in more of the founders of the community, people like Otto
Gross, Rudolf Steiner, Krishnamurti, Isadora Duncan, Hermann Hesse.
In this attractive collection one finds also documents which analyze the
particular magnetism telluric of this area (!): a manner of wanting to include/understand
why so many great minds were found here and were inspired here.

sight
on the lake since the terrace of the current reception centre

December
10 97 - TELEVISION

THE
MOUNTAIN NOT MAGIC.

'
the mountain of the vérité', Alexandre Adler and his ' Wednesdays of the
histoire' considers a particular case of the German history. Arte, 20. 45.

To
redefine the conditions of happiness by fleeing misery and pollution, by
eating vegetarian, by living naked feet... Such was the ambition of a handle
of colonists who were installed at the beginning of the century on a small
hill of Italian Switzerland to found Monte Verità there, the mountain of the
truth. In 1900, seven men and women who had met in a circle of anarchists of
Munich buy a few hectares of ground in Tessin, clear and build huts in order
to build a better world. During one half-century, some great figures of
European intelligentsia meet in Monte Verità. The author of this document
isolates four from it: the psychoanalyst Otto Gross (pioneer of the sexual
revolution), the ' poet with the feet nus' Gusto Greser (which inspired the
vagrants of Hermann Hesse), the choreographer Rudolf von Laban (renovating of
the modern dance) and the writer Erich Mühsam (figurehead of the German
revolution of 1918). The destinies out of the commun run of these four
individuals will reveal the ambiguity of the utopian project which had joined
together them. Vêtus of skins of animal, Greser digresses in bombarded
Munich, Gross dies in Berlin as an anonymous tramp, Mühsam succumbs under
torture Nazi while von Laban lends allegiance to Goebbels and becomes chief of
the German ballets. The worship of the sun and the dances in the meadows are
well far: the history caught up with those which had believed to be able to
forget it, or to transform it. These crossed destinies, told thanks to an
important layer of files, show how the topics of the revolt and the destiny
are woven. Monte Verità is a revealing adventure of the dreams and nightmares
which are ours.

comment
on the emission TV: Assemble Verità

The
mountain of the truth, documentary of Henry Colomer diffused on Arte Wednesday
December 10 at 8 p.m. 45 tries to show the ambiguous role which would have the
pioneers of a libertarian community located close of Ancona in Switzerland at
the beginning of the century. While following the route of four among those
which remained there : Otto Gross, psychoanalyst, Gusto Graeser, vagrant,
Rudolf von Laban, choreographer who will put themselves at the service of
Goebbels, Erich Mühsam, anarchistic poet assassinated by the Nazis,
documentary the richly illustrated one try to reveal that this community would
have supported the rise of the Nazism. Wouldn't Erich Mühsam have written an
anthem vegetarian in 1905, and Hitler he was not vegetarian? Other sophisms
will be used as arguments. However this experiment Community stops in 1920,
and apart from the support which Mühsam brought to Otto Gross when this one
was interned on the order of his/her father, the bonds between these four
characters are not approached. If their fate, apart from that of Laban is
tragic, is this a reason to conclude from it that if they failed it is that
they were wrong? Must one believe that those which succeed in the life are
right?..

Eric
Jarry

the
reform of the life and naturmenschen:

(extracted
the site: http://www.blavatsky.net, which does not exist any more)

But,
Churward is not the only one to support the existence of a lost continent.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the movement theosophist, also supports
the existence of a lost continent, Lémurie. It is to note that Helena
Blavatsky made stays in India at one time when Churward itself was confined
there (fine 19th century - according to H. Santesson). It was also initiated
by "rishi" and it influenced the first research of Churward on the
Golden age of humanity. Blavatsky was extrêment influenced by the racist
theories of max Muller. Also let us quote the nearest relative of the
Theosophy, Anthroposophie (of Rudolf Steiner) affirming that the spiritual
capacity is a function of the racial "purity". The theories enacted
by Helena Blavatsky are extremely close to the principles of Mahikari:

single
god

prevalence
of the nature and natural laws in general,

the
universe is governed by the laws of the karma

principle
of the successive reincarnations necessary to the purification of our
errors

principle
of the three plans: physics, mental and spiritual

rejection
of the theory of the evolution

Lost
golden age (unintermitting absorbed: Lémurie and Atlantis)

all
the religions derive from the same trunk (the primitive religion of the
emperor of Japan according to Mahikari)

importance
of the myths

God
sent messengers to various times

It
is it also which introduced the Eastern religions in Occident.

It
thus seem that fine 19th century and beginning of 20th, a certain
philosophical mobility, taking again extremely similar principles, with
however certain differences, was done day and has joins together Western and
Eastern concepts. This mobility will take another turning in the Twenties and
Thirties.
After the First World War developed in Germany and Switzerland a movement of
return to nature, of rediscovery of the human body, linking dance and gestures.
One of these philosophers, Jaques Dalcroze, founded a community of which the
goal was to find the harmony with nature. The pediment of its school raised
the Eastern symbol of Yin and Yang intermingled. Other communities were
installed on a hill of Swiss Tessin that one called "Monte Verità".
These "naturmenschen" lived generally naked, cultivated their
vegetables (there was a fort running vegetarian) and refused the modern
society. They carried out ritual dances, often on a music of Wagner, preferred
of certain Adolph Hitler. Certain communities were used as laboratories to
certain theosophists. One also found libertarians, anarchists and naturists.
All these communities announced a new age and regretted the Golden age (a
matriarchy for some), the Lost Paradise. Let us quote the Order of the Temple
of the East, Gross (which interpreted with its way the theory of Freud),
Graeser or Muck-Lamberty which launched a movement announcing of new times
after the German defeat of 14-18. Another movement of the campaigns,
WanderVogel (migratory birds), preceded the scouts. The children left to make
ballades, to discover nature, sang old Germanic songs idealizing the Gothic
Middle Ages, the whole in an iron discipline.
These movements of return to nature and "patriotic scouting" were
diverted by Hitler. Admittedly, all WanderVogels did not become Nazi, but they
prepared the values of the mode Nazi: racism, exaltation of the force and
nature, idealization of the Middle Ages, idealization of the fatherland,
harmonizes with the cosmic force, fusion of the individual in the community of
the race, etc.
Moreover, the majority of the movements rejected the money and the materialism,
just like Hitler which proposed its "national-socialisme", its
vision supporter of corporatism of the economy.

Anatta Put:
the most original house out of wooden of Switzerland, dwelling and seat of the
Co-operative Vegetarian Assembles Verità.
Since 1981 permanent museum on the history of Assembles Verità and its
Utopias (anarchy, social Utopia, theosophy, reform of the life, psychology,
mythology, dance, music, literature).

Selma Put:
hut air-light of the vegetarians of Assembles Verità in 1900, where are
preserved other documents on the life of Assembles Verità.

Chiaro Mondo dei Beati:
house drink some in the style Monte Verità, restored in 1986 to present
painting the Paradise imagined by the painter Elisar von Kupffer, on a large
panoramic circular fabric.